TLS: Monday, February 22, 1943

(Letterhead: TAO HOUSE / DANVILLE / CONTRA COSTA COUNTY / CALIFORNIA)

Dear Bob:

The O'Neill household has been much upset lately or this reply would have been sooner. Carlotta had a bout of flu and just escaped pneumonia. And my Parkinson's disease has been getting much worse - which is inevitable, even if there was no war strain to encourage it. Some days I can't write - can't physically, I mean - my hands won't behave. And we have been badly bitten by cook-troubles. A recent one, who lingered for two weeks, turned out to be loony - a definite psychopathic case - and were we glad to get her off the premises! Living in the country these days is no cinch, from so many angles, but when we think of how much more difficult it is in the East we're delighted to be here.

It is grand to hear you are so satisfied with your work at Metro. "Faculty Row" certainly ought to be a hit - with O'Neill on the blackboard, how can it miss? (many thanks for the ad!) - and I particularly like your idea for the O'Brian kid. You should have a lot of amusement doing that one. I have a suggestion you might think worth working in. It's taken from life and the old days of Provincetown. A certain radical lady writer there had a prodigy child (male), a bit older than your girl star, who had read the Encyclopedia Brittanica from cover to cover. Fact! More horrible still, he possessed an abnormal memory, and he persisted in interrupting ignorant adult discussions on any topic, correcting errors, and giving the old Brittanica facts. A most obnoxious child, intensely loathed by one and all!

By all means, keep plugging on the Frank Morgan film theme in other films. That is really true propaganda for democracy. I am surprised and pleased that it drew cheers from an audience. A darned hopeful sign of awakening! The trouble is, as I harped on in "Lazarus Laughed", men cheer and then forget everything but the things they should forget. I am afraid the peace after this war will be another outstanding proof of that.

Much gratitude for your offer of help in our isolation, but we are like you, nothing to complain about. Yes, I, too, read in the papers about how frightful it is for us rationed civilians. The beefers had better save their beefs. They ain't seen nothing yet.

Re my daughter, you can't prove she is in Hollywood by me. I have heard from her only once since she relinquished education in favor of Stork Club glamour. She wrote tersely to state she wanted to see me to tell me what she intended to do. Strangely enough, while I admire youthful independence, this did not strike me as the correct approach after nearly a year's silence, considering various interviews she had given out, her general conduct during that time as reported to me, etc. In fact, I was extremely fed-up and wrote her a sound spanking reply. Since which, communication lines are severed, so to speak. If she has the notion of becoming a film glamour girl, she has never divulged such ambition to me. But it is probably, I suppose the easiest way to exploit my name for dough and publicity, her advisors will figure. In my letter I told her I would rather have a Red Cross nurse or a munition plant worker for a daughter than ten million glamour nitwits. I fear that didn't take very well. From her letter, I judge she has never heard of the war, or of taxes, or even of the alimony that supports her.

It is one of those things, Bob - her mother's spoiled little girl, and the only right I've had was the right to be vetoed. I bore you with the above information because I'd like you at least to know the truth down there in case she does land a job. It will be no case of my being estranged from the young lady just because she wants to break into films, as they may believe is a good publicity angle, but for sundry other matters which had to do with her past conduct toward me.

About "Long Day's Journey Into Night", I still have no script I could send. No one has read it. Carlotta has had so much housework to do for a long time - we keep only a cook (when we can get one!) and the secretary work is out. Besides, it is certainly no play for now, for many reasons, so why bother!

In the past year I've rewritten one of the Cycle plays "A Touch Of The Poet", did some work on another non-Cycle play, "The Last Conquest" and am now rewriting the play (non-Cycle, too) which got blown apart by Pearl Harbor, "A Moon For The Misbegotten". But everything moves slowly - bad health interruptions, and, of course, war preoccupation - and post-war apprehensions! - giving me on many days the old "what's-the-use" apathy.

Yes, I have a grand idea for a picture, "The Last Conquest" play I've mentioned above. In many ways it could be done much better in a film than on the stage. Also, it could be the most significant picture ever made - in my opinion, of course. But hold everything! You couldn't get anyone to touch it with a two mile pole. To prove this here's something about it: Time, the future, a century or so hence. The seemingly inevitable has happened. There is one universal Collectivist World State. The realistic life-conception that men are only what they seem has triumphed completely and given birth to a State religion. The Stare is the Mother Goddess with the main figure in the State is Her Son, Divine but also a man, the Leader, the Saviour of Mankind, the World Dictator. His principal minister and adviser - and his ruler, really, - is Satan in the form of a man, a former magician, hypnotist, and ventriloquist. All men, including the Elite ruling caste, have become slaves to Divine Leader and the State - but believing that the slavery of the citizen is the natural state of man they are contented. Man has no value in himself, but merely as a citizen of the State.

In short, Evil, as symbolized by Satan, has won a complete and final realistic victory - that is, seemingly. Men no longer have souls. Good is simply unscrupulous opportunism. The Will to Power has enslaved the world and crushed the spirit from men. Hope is dead. All has been conquered. Satan feels his job on earth is really finished. But there is still one thing to do. There still exists in the minds of men, thrust back in the subconscious because the law does not permit thought about it, a dim memory of an old unrealistic legend concerning a saviour of ancient times. The danger in the legend is that it contained a prophecy he would come back to earth a second time. So Satan advises the Leader to let him undertake The Last Conquest which will erase forever from men's minds this hidden memory of Christ (Good). The danger is slight, of course, but still it does exist and it should be liquidated. And the way to do this is to attack first, as always, - to fake the Second Coming, to repeat all the main incidents of Christ's former career on earth but turn it into a farcical pageant which will make everyone laugh with scorn. The memory must be murdered by sneering laughter. As for how to fake Christ himself, Satan is a wonderful wood carver, too. He shows a life size figure of Christ to the Divine Leader and his council of Ministers, Satan's colleagues. As for making the figure speak, Satan is the greatest of all ventriloquists, and he knows everything Christ said before, and all he has to do is to use these words because they will sound so ridiculous now. He makes the figure of Christ appear to say, as an example, "Love ye one another". Grotesque! In the Omnipotent World State the first principal of realistic self-preservation is to hate and fear your neighbour, because, like yourself, what is he but a greedy animal?

Etc. That's all in Prologue. First scene of play, the Mount of Temptation in which Christ is offered the world if He will give up His soul. When He refuses, all the citizens of the world gathered (by decree) on the plains below let out a roar of incredulous laughter. To refuse all in exchange for what doesn't exist! Evidently, an imbecile!

Well, you get the idea. And Satan does not win in the end. In fact, strangely enough, he does not really want to win - that is, part of him does not. He is a complicated proud character and -

In the play, only the Divine Leader-World Ruler and His Minister of Spiritual Affairs (Satan) are men - that is, until the final of two last Calvary Scenes. All the other ministers are ventriloquist dummies. So are any other individual figures - bureaucratic priests of the State Goddess in the Temple scene, etc. The citizens of the State are mostly painted on drops. (So appropriate! I feel like that already!) Satan will be a wonderful part if I ever finish this opus - so wonderful no actor could ever memorize all the lines in four weeks, let alone play it - So that saves me any worry about production.

Of course, what I've given you is such a bare sketch that it really conveys little. Seriously, I think the idea hits the real disease of the world, of which the last world war and this one and the ones to come are and will be but symptoms. It might be subtitled "Propaganda Against Realism". Governments now all act as if any end justified any means, in peace as well as war, and call that realism - and I'm sure all the boys on Alcatraz agree with them! The end of that credo is death in life - for nations as well as individuals. What to do about it? I don't know. I have no faith and no answers - only a hope. But, by Christ, I do see the question and I don't let myself evade it, although that would make life and wars a lot easier to take and death less desirable.

But I drift. Now you've got this colossal idea, just drop it in Mr Goldwyn's or Mr Mayer's lap, forward their cheque for a hundred grand and start shooting. Of course, they may land in Leavenworth with us when it dawns on Washington that I mean a possible future United States State, too. But what the hell, we will all have each other.

All affectionate best from us to you and Cepha.

As ever,

Gene

February the 22nd 1943.